A cross honors those killed in April when the West fertilizer plant was leveled in a blast. So far, the foundation overseeing about $3.6 million donated in the disaster’s wake has released less than 20 percent of it.

THE RECOVERY

The long, hard wait

Pace of aid distribution riles, frustrates some West victims

Written bySTEVE THOMPSON | STAFF WRITER

Photography byLOUIS DeLUCA | STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Published January 5, 2014

WEST — Weeks after the blast, a caregiver wheeled Deirdre Matus into an old brick building along the town’s main strip. Permanently blinded, still in a wheelchair, Matus had come for help. Matus, 50, and her husband were among hundreds of residents injured in the fertilizer explosion here in April.

Inside the recovery center, relief workers offered them a bag of groceries and some household supplies.

But what Matus mostly needed was money. Her medical bills were mounting and her home had been destroyed.

She left wondering about all the cash donations that flowed into town, the money newscasters kept talking about. Only later did someone invite her to begin building a case file to apply for a share of it.

More than eight months after the blast, she’s still waiting.

So far, the foundation overseeing about $3.6 million donated in the disaster’s wake has released less than 20 percent of it.

“We still don’t know what we’re going to get, or if we’re going to get anything,” Matus said.

Frustration has mounted in this small town over the distribution of money donated after the explosion killed 15, injured hundreds and left more than $100 million in damages.

Some residents have criticized the process as needlessly bureaucratic and painfully slow. Some say it has been humiliating, filled with forms and questions that leave them feeling like beggars. Others have simply given up on getting help.

Tensions escalated recently when the head of the recovery effort, a local real estate agent, accused some residents of being ungrateful. She wrote it in a column that ran in the local weekly. Days later, she announced her resignation.

While West’s mayor, Tommy Muska, gives the overall recovery effort “an A+” and has only praise for those involved, he agrees that the money is “not moving fast enough for a lot of people, myself included.”

It’s a scenario that plays out every year, in cities and towns across the country. Tragedy strikes. Images are blasted across television screens. People clamor to help. They open their wallets and donate cash.

That’s what happened in West, after a fire ignited fertilizer inside a wooden warehouse on April 17. The force of the blast destroyed a middle school, a nursing home and entire blocks of homes.

In many cases, people were forced to evacuate from severely damaged houses with no indication of when they could return. Amid the confusion, there were funerals to arrange.

People across the country stepped forward to help. They sent $10 bills inside hand-scrawled envelopes. Businesses wrote checks. As town leaders directed the cash to two local banks, it became clear that they needed an organization to distribute it.

One man who could have helped was Joey Pustejovsky. He was the city secretary, the equivalent to a larger city’s manager. He oversaw everything from payroll to water billing to court administration. But Pustejovsky, a volunteer firefighter, died in the explosion.

The job of setting up an organization fell to a local real estate agent, Karen Bernsen, who had volunteered to help handle logistics. She and her husband and four children lived just over a mile from the explosion, outside the blast zone.

On May 21, an attorney filed paperwork with state authorities to create the foundation that would later be called West Long-Term Recovery. Bernsen became its registered agent, and three prominent community members signed on as board members.

That same day, the City Council passed a resolution supporting the need for such a foundation. Soon, the council appointed two additional community members to the foundation’s board.

From the start, everyone knew the several million dollars in private donations wouldn’t come close to covering the tens of millions worth of need. But they’d do the best they could.

Divvying donations

The foundation faced a set of complicated questions: How do you decide who gets what? How do you guard against fraud? What tax laws are involved?

Relief operations often take one of two paths. The first involves hiring caseworkers. They interview each victim, evaluate needs and assess who should get what. It’s a slow approach that unfolds over months but is thorough and fair, proponents believe.

Some say this is the best way to spread scarce resources, making sure help gets to those who need it most.

“Recovery takes a long time. Getting people’s lives restored takes a long time,” said Regine Webster, vice president of the Center for Disaster Philanthropy. “Giving money out in a smart, effective, thoughtful way takes a long time.”

The second path to distributing donations after a disaster places a high priority on speed. Forget caseworkers. Divvy up the money. Get it out the door. This approach has worked well after several mass tragedies in recent years.

After the Boston Marathon bombing — which happened two days before the West explosion — One Fund Boston distributed more than $60 million in two months.

The administrator of that fund, attorney Kenneth Feinberg, could be called the father of this rapid approach.

Feinberg is a veteran of many disaster funds. They include the 2007 shooting massacre at Virginia Tech, the 2011 stage collapse at the Indiana State Fair and the 2012 movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo.

Feinberg had no involvement in West’s recovery effort and said he could only comment on the funds he’s overseen.

“In the cases I’ve worked on, there is nothing more important than getting money out the door, and getting it out fast,” he said. “That’s the top priority.”

James and Rachel Matus stand where their house used to be in West. Several survivors said they resented being treated like charity cases to access money meant for them.

In Boston, for instance, victims with double amputations received $2.2 million. Single amputees received $1.2 million. Those hospitalized for a night received $125,000.

To Feinberg, whether the victim is wealthy or poor is irrelevant. “They’re all in need; they’re all desperate,” he said.

Making distinctions among them can promote community division, he said. Hiring caseworkers to assess each individual’s need can mire the process.

After the shooting in Aurora, Feinberg distributed $5 million in about 45 days. But he was brought in only after family members of the dead and wounded expressed dissatisfaction with the initial plan to disburse the funds.

The original plan in Aurora, which involved caseworkers and needs assessments, was spearheaded by a retired United Way executive named Richard Audsley. He has consulted on numerous mass tragedies since Columbine in 1999.

Pressure to distribute money quickly has increased since the days of Columbine, Audsley said.

“We really felt the need to get the money out the door, but it’s much more intense today,” he said.

Audsley said that he respects Feinberg’s method but that there are benefits to the caseworker process.

“Somewhere there has to be a reasonable center between the two approaches,” he said.

IRS worries

In West, many people had the gut-level impulse to distribute the money quickly — without knowing they were urging Feinberg’s method.

“I was arguing with the board, saying that we need to just split up the money and divvy it out,” said John Crowder, a West Long-Term Recovery board member and senior pastor at West’s First Baptist Church. “They kept telling me we couldn’t do that.”

That was because of IRS rules. The recovery center had applied for status as a 501(c)(3), a tax-exempt charity. Large donors wanted to be able to write off their contributions.

It’s not difficult to argue that Feinberg’s method violates rules for tax-exempt charities.

IRS guidance after the Oklahoma City bombing and since then has cautioned charities to provide funds only to those deemed “needy” or “distressed.”

“The charity must assess the needs of applicants based on their situation and resources,” the IRS said.

That would seem to put Feinberg’s method out of bounds. But he says none of his efforts met with IRS objection.

For those in West, however, risking trouble from the IRS didn’t seem like an option.

“I think the IRS would come down here and look at these books all day long,” said Muska, the mayor.

The IRS granted the recovery center tax-exempt status on July 11. But that was only a first step. Now those holding the money — the two local banks and a foundation in Waco — had to be persuaded to turn it over.

“They were being very careful, as they should have been,” said Crowder. “It took us a long time to work through those negotiations and prove to them that we had a system that would work with the IRS, the lawyer, the CPA.”

The negotiations involved creating policies for disbursing the money. The process wasn’t finished until Sept. 24, five months after the explosion.

TIMELINE | Lengthy process

West Long-Term Recovery took months to begin distributing money donated after the explosion. More than eight months after the blast, about $430,000 of the roughly $3.6 million in donations has been disbursed.

April 17: Fertilizer warehouse explodes.

May 21: Paperwork filed with state to create WLTR.

Late May: WLTR applies for tax-exempt status.

July 11: IRS grants tax-exempt status.

Sept. 24: WLTR adopts policies and procedures.

Oct. 16: WLTR approves first payments for victims.

Today: Payments approved total $650,266.

“If [the recovery fund has] helped some people, excuse my language, but where the hell are they?” said Carol Waddell, whose daughter Rachel Matus lost her home in the explosion. “Because in this town, we would know if somebody had received some help.”

The new rules emphasized that applicants must lack “the resources to provide basic necessities” and “must have exhausted all other resources.”

Meanwhile, the recovery center replaced a group of case managers who had stepped in soon after the explosion. The center switched to three case managers and a supervisor provided by the Central Texas Conference of the United Methodist Church.

“It was somewhat of a restart. It was hard to have a real fluid handoff,” said Ron Sykora, an executive at the local Ford dealership who serves as president of West Long-Term Recovery’s board.

The case managers were charged with helping victims navigate not just the recovery center’s rules, but those of
FEMA and other relief sources. Facing some 500 complex cases, they were quickly overwhelmed.

The United Methodist Church pledged four additional case managers. But it took time to assemble and train them. It was November before they began.

The case managers create anonymous files for each applicant. Then, a committee of community members hears a handful of cases each week, trying to decide on need.

“It’s taking people awhile to get their paperwork in, to have everything there so the case can be presented,” Sykora said. “We estimate we may be disseminating money for a year, and it may take longer.”

Paperwork

So far, West Long-Term Recovery officials say $650,266 has been approved for payment on behalf of 43 victims. About two-thirds of that money has been paid. The rest still awaits invoices or other paperwork from victims.

“We are paying contractors, we are paying doctors’ bills, we’re paying directly to other people as opposed to the individuals,” Sykora said. “We’re cutting checks as soon as we’ve got a bill to pay.”

By mid-November, frustrations among some victims were boiling over. A handful gathered one night at Nors Sausage & Burger House in downtown West, just a few doors down from the recovery center’s headquarters.

“If they have helped some people, excuse my language, but where the hell are they?” said Carol Waddell, whose daughter Rachel Matus lost her home in the explosion. “Because in this town, we would know if somebody had received some help.”

Several explosion victims said they resented being treated like charity cases to access money meant for them.

“They ask you degrading questions,” said Brian Padgett, whose fiancé lost her home. “‘How much money did you make? What are your immediate needs? Are your immediate needs met?’”

Sharon Rios, whose mother lost her home, said many of her friends and relatives have given up on the donations.

“They’re through fighting with the long-term recovery center,” Rios said.

Rios set up a Facebook group, “We, the people, of West, Texas,” that serves largely for people to vent about West Long-Term Recovery. It has 500 members.

Many of the posts focus on Bernsen, the foundation’s director. After she started as a volunteer, the board began paying her a salary from funds donated for that purpose. Online commenters wanted to know how she was qualified. What was she paid? Where was the donated money?

Bernsen’s late-November newspaper column came as if in response. It began smoothly enough, with an anecdote about Thanksgiving. But there, after mention of the pilgrims, it veered sharply.

In an interview, Bernsen said her column had nothing to do with the Facebook page or those who commented on it. She said her frustration was directed at explosion victims who want too much — “bigger, better, faster” — rather than being satisfied to rebuild within their means.

Bernsen said her resignation, announced days later, was unrelated to the column. She said she’d decided beforehand to get back to her family and real estate career. She’s agreed to stay until late January.

Bernsen declined to reveal her salary, though it eventually must be made public in the foundation’s tax return.

“It doesn’t matter, because half the people will think it’s too much, half the people will think it’s not enough,” she said.

Many in town praise Bernsen.

“I know she got some black eyes out of this stuff, but I think her intentions were noble,” said Muska, the mayor. “She did a good job for the city.”

Tensions like those in West have been seen over and over after mass tragedies.

In March, a few months after a gunman killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, a group representing families of previous tragedies put out a statement.

“Going back to Oklahoma City, we’ve seen families who have had to endure not only horrific loss, but also the unimaginable task of wrestling with Byzantine nonprofit bureaucracies to access financial relief intended for them,” the families said. “It’s time to stop the madness. We cannot watch this happen, yet again, in Sandy Hook.”

The group’s aim is to provide victims of future tragedies a framework for handling donations, using a Feinberg-style model to distribute them quickly.

“Every time this happens, it’s like we’re re-creating the wheel,” said the group’s spokeswoman, Caryn Kaufman. “The community that’s affected has to figure it out for themselves.”■